Marion General Hospital, the largest hospital in the seven-county service area in Marion, Indiana, USA, has selected Orion Health’s Rhapsody Integration Engine to upgrade and manage message exchanges from a proprietary system.

Implementing Rhapsody allows for transparent data-exchange for its end-users while increasing productivity. The software also enables physicians to maintain their quality of patient care.

Marion General’s IT team needed a cost-effective way to implement a new architecture without affecting 1,300 plus employees. Operating a 125-bed facility, the technology upgrade was needed to ensure the hospital remained efficient.

'Rhapsody has been a very welcomed addition to the cutting-edge technology that we pride our hospital on here in Marion ,' said David Carmichael , application specialist at Marion General .

Marion General Hospital was faced with a couple of challenges. One was how to reduce point-to-point interface costs between systems, and the other was how to be prepared for the many hospital to physician practice interface requests. With the sudden growth in Electronic Medical record (EMR) adoption by physician practices, it is important for physicians to electronically receive test results accurately, timely, and efficiently directly into their EMR systems. This greatly improves patient care in the community.

'We looked at several interface engines with a goal to find one that was simple, easy to use, flexible, and did not require a dedicated advanced programmer to maintain it. That brought us in a partnership with Orion Health on their Rhapsody Interface Engine. Rhapsody's graphical user interface with its drag and drop functionality makes it easy for us to create and maintain our interfaces without advanced programming knowledge,' explained Emmanuel Ndow, CIO at Marion General.

Marion General needed to provide messaging integration from their existing system that was transparent to its end users and physicians. Rhapsody enables healthcare organisations to seamlessly transfer information both internally and externally, without the need to replace existing information systems. When Rhapsody is fully implemented, it will provide Marion General a cost-effective, easy to use, easy to maintain solution for sharing data between systems.

'Rhapsody has given us a tool in IT that is extremely easy to use. This allows us to be more efficient and responsive to requests from our users for changes,' said Carmichael .

In addition to providing Marion General's IT staff with an upgraded level of messaging functionality, Rhapsody's mapping tool also allows for simplified coding and an easy interface.

'Marion General's focus on state of the art technology and dedication to its patients makes it an honour that they have chosen Rhapsody to help improve the quality of their healthcare ,' sais Paul Viskovich, Orion Health president, North American Operations.